


After Everything

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Projecthappystark, i tried my best to make it more fluffy ahahhaa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 00:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6098536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rework of the MCU chopping wood scene, except a whole lot more happy and romantic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is for projecthappystark, an annual event hosted on tumblr dedicated to happy tony things! it is a great thing, honestly, i love it. 
> 
> The prompt was the MCU chopping wood scene, so it had to be slightly sad to be happy. I hope you all like it!

Steve paced the hallways of the Barton household, alternating between staring at family pictures on the wall and muttering anxiously to himself. His nervousness was contagious, and it clogged the house, his footsteps loud with the weight of his burden. It got to the point where Clint told him, not unkindly, to go outside and get some fresh air.

“Stark’s outside too,” he said, and watched Steve’s face for any sign of apprehension, any sign that he felt the way his other teammates felt about the brilliant inventor. When he saw none, he continued. “He’s chopping wood. I figure you could join him, he’s unbearably slow.”

Steve muttered under his breath, an argument with himself, and his hands twitch at his side. Steve Rogers was a soldier through and through, and he was always on guard. Perhaps, then, this hidden utopia of untouched nature struck a nerve within him. It was too peaceful to be treated as real, but he knew it was not a dream induced by Wanda Maximoff. There had been a sense of wrong in that dream, the sinking knowledge that everything was a lie. Here, every colour, every emotion was so strongly felt that Steve knew without doubt it was real, and that made him even more frightened. He nods and walks outside, where there was the perfect amount of light. Steve shuddered minutely.

He watched Tony for a while, the way he stared melancholic at the wooden block and hacked it to pieces like it had offended him. Beyond him, the expanse of empty hills rose and dipped beautifully. The air was fresh with the scent of a thousand wildflowers and as far as Steve could see were tall, guarding sentinels that cut imposing figures against the red of the sky. The sun was dipping low in the sky, a portion of it was hidden by the trees, and long shadows were cast on the ground. The first stars were appearing, remote and wonderful against the sky, and they granted Steve a comfort he did not think he would have. There was a dream-like quality to the whole setting, like the whole thing could be ripped apart in an instant. Steve supposed that was why it was precious, because it did not last. His attention is dragged back to the man in the middle, hunched over by the weight of his tormented private life. The wood he chopped was now looking like it had been run through a blunt shredder. “That’s not the way,” Steve said, and narrowly avoided getting his head chopped off by the axe. Tony glared at him without hatred.

He said, “way to give a guy a warning,” and then gestured at the blue light that emanated from his chest like a star. “I could have had a heart attack. That would be doubly bad for me.”

Steve laughed and took the axe from him, rearranging his fingers on the axe and showing him the correct method to swing it. “You want the Bartons to have wood after you’re through with it, not tiny splinters.”

“You need splinters for a fire,” Toy argued, ever the defiant soul. He followed Steve’s suggestion however, deciding that his pile of splinters was indeed big enough to last the family a few months. “Do you ever think about this sometimes?”

“About what?”

“A family,” Tony found his throat to be constricted. He swung the axe in time to his words. “A small cabin in the middle of nowhere. No obligations or evil people trying to break down your door- just blessed silence.”

“All the time,” Steve replied. He swung the axe and the wood made a ripping sound and fell nearly apart in two. “But always with you.”

Tony flushed and looked away. Steve had always liked to think that when Tony blushed, got embarrassed or angry, his arc reactor did accordingly, glowing brighter or dimmer. He thought it was brighter now. “Even after everything?”

“Tell me why you did it,” Steve said earnestly as he split another log. “Why did you make Ultron?”

“I wanted a messiah,” Tony muttered. The drone of the bees in the distance fades increases to a heavy sound. “I wanted a leader to guard the world. And I know I was wrong-” his voice takes on a tone of resolution. “But I will not apologise for trying to do something good.”  
  
“Ultron was supposed to heal the world, and you give him a name meaning _the throne_?”  
  
“In hindsight,” Tony frowned at that. “That may have been a bad idea. But Ultron had an aesthetic ring to it, and it sounded like something people would follow. I just wanted to help, Steve. I just wanted to _help_.”  
  
“I know,” Steve reassured him, his voice comforting as always. “I know, Tony. It is alright.”  
  
Tony swings the axe in a brutal downward blow. “Do you?”  
  
“Yes,” Steve smiled gently at him, in a way that he felt he was entirely undeserving of. “That’s why after everything, Tony, because you aren’t innately evil. Deep down, you’re a good person. And you’ll save the world on your own terms- you already have. So am I going to defend your actions? Absolutely. Not because they were right, but because they deserve to be.”

Tony did not reply, and they continued in silence for a while, until Steve broke it. “You remember the last time we were this long outdoors?”

Tony looked at him out of the corner of his eyes and smiled softly. “I got stung by a bee.”

“Other than that?”

“I was stung by another bee,” Tony deadpanned. Steve laughed again and threw a log at him effortlessly. “Bees fucking hate me.”

“I told you, it is not the bees’ fault, it’s your arc reactor. The brightness attracts them at night.”

“Yeah, blame the thing that is keeping me alive, why don’t you,” Tony rolled his eyes and huffed. He covered the arc reactor with his hands, but the blue light emanated through the gaps of his fingers. The light had become something Steve was accustomed to sleeping with, and now he found that total darkness scared him.

“What else happened?”

“Do you want the answer you want to hear?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Steve grinned darkly at him from across the field, and Tony felt drunk off the power he suddenly had.

“I kissed you,” he said simply, and this sudden confession warmed Steve. “It was very much like an Ed Sheeran song, you know, with the whole _kiss me under the light of a thousand stars thing_.”

“I understood that,” Steve pointed at him, and laughed again. Tony felt the corners of his lips twitch up in response. “I think that was one of the best days of my life.”

Tony waves a dismissive hand, but looked pleased. “Shut up.”

“I am serious!” Steve insisted, and ambled over to him with the loping grace of a sheepdog. He puts his hands on Tony’s waist and looks seriously at him. “I love you.”

Tony took a deep breath and then rose on his tiptoes to press his lips to the hollow of Steve’s throat. He could feel the pulse of Steve’s heart beneath his lips, and that gesture was somehow the most intimate thing he’d done. Steve can’t speak.

The sun was now three-quarters covered by the hills, and more stars had appeared in the sky. The clouds burnt a fierce orange, tinted with pink. Tony would take a picture, but he was afraid it would not turn out nice and he would be left with a half-assed version. He pulled away from Steve just as the front door opened and Clint’s wife walked out of the door. She was intuitive, and glanced apologetically at the two of them, wearing an expression like she had walked into the middle of something undefinable.

“I am sorry,” she started off. “But our tractor’s not working and Clint can’t find anything wrong with it. Do you think you could fix it?”

Tony looked at her, eager to offer something. “Sure,” he said.

“Fixing tractors,” Steve shook his head in wonder when she left. “What you’ve become, shellhead.”

“Hey!” Tony pointed the axe at him. “Fixing tractors is incredibly important, okay.”

“Sure,” Steve sniggered, and kisses his forehead. “I bet you could tell me all about it.”

“Do you wanna know why I gotta know how to fix machinery?” Tony demanded, and carefully put down the axe in order to jab Steve’s chest with every word he said. “Because someone insists on throwing his incredibly expensive and hard to fix motorcycle into tanks!”

“Hey- I do what I got to do.”

“You THROW your motorcycle into TANKS. What am I supposed to salvage? Your motorcycle is not made of vibranium! Throw your goddamn shield, Rogers, or you fix your own damned motorcycle,” Tony stuck his tongue out as Steve in a way that set him off in peals of laughter. “How they dealt with you in the war is beyond me- I think about their lack of resources and shudder.”  
  
“I threw Nazi motorcycles.”  
  
“Then throw Hydra motorcycles! Leave the Stark ones alone,” Tony made a mock gesture of prayer. “The equipment team has had it up to here with your antics.”  
“I have different skill sets,” Steve informed him. “I am grunt work.”

“Grunt work,” Tony eyed him unforgivingly. “Like throwing something I worked incredibly hard on into something that would wreck it.”

“I'm good at that stuff! Throwing things, tearing things in half, the usual.”

“Tearing things into half,” the rest of Tony's words became an ungracious mutter, but his eyes twinkled with delight.

“Oh, you want to go?” Steve folded his arms across his chest at his statement and then picked up the thickest log they have in the stack, and dug his fingers into a small groove. In a fluid motion entirely too graceful for the destructive action, he pulled apart the log like it was paper.

Tony’s eyes widened when they saw Steve’s muscles bulge and his mouth tighten as he yanked apart the log. Splinters flew and fluttered down to the ground, and Steve unconsciously flexed. He held the two massive pieces of the logs each in one hand like it was nothing. “Jesus fuck me,” Tony babbled, and reached forward both hands to grip the edges of his shirt. “Oh, goddamn, that was literally the hottest thing ever, fuck me.”

“Tempting,” Steve said, as the darkness descended upon them. “But you’ve got to go fix a tractor.”

“Fuck you!”

“You know you want to,” Steve laughed, and Tony threw a log at him, although admittedly with significantly more effort.

The sky turned from navy to obsidian quickly, the moon casting its light down on the house. The shadows of the trees deepened until they were indistinguishable from the darkness, and the night flowers of the glade bloomed, and their scent spilled over and took possession of the valley. In the midst of this peace, Tony was wrapped in a haze of loving and being loved, and somehow, that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Ultron, in Romanian, when written as ul and tron, literally translates into the throne. Amazing, yet slightly scary. Am wondering if this is intentional. (on the flip side, ul tron when entered as Russian translates to street throne, which implies a beggar throne. Language, everyone!)


End file.
